Desmond File

Presetting the Table

When .NET Framework 3.0 arrived in November, a lot of readers expressed concern
about the rapid-fire pace of updates. The jump from .NET 1.1 to 2.0 was tough,
requiring IT and development shops to take careful measure before making a shift.
While the move to .NET 3.0 has been far less dramatic, dev shops face a lot
of questions as they move to support Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows
Communication Foundation and Windows Workflow Foundation.

In fact, the answers to those questions have yet to arrive. According to Jay
traband at .NET tools provider IdeaBlade, Microsoft has adopted a fresh strategy
that seeds strategic technologies ahead of the tools that implement them. .NET
3.0, he says, is just such an effort.

"I think Microsoft is doing an elegant job of building something with
the core of .NET. Microsoft gets a lot of things in with one release, but it
isn't usable until the following release. A lot of that stuff isn't usable until
[the Visual Studio] Orcas release," traband said.

It makes sense. As operating system platforms and applications become more
complex, the need to lay down foundation technologies increases. For traband,
whose company is involved in extending .NET into the realm of distributed applications,
Web services and SOA, the new Microsoft approach seems to be paying dividends.

"It's really very impressive. I actually come from the Java world and
love Java, but I think Microsoft has done a truly elegant job in exposing the
primitive concepts," traband said. "We feel internally [that WCF]
is a much better infrastructure, but we find people are interested because it
has much better [Web services] standards compliance."